Colbert, Cowher talk about Roethlisberger

Dale Lolley

04/24/2004

<b>Kevin Colbert:</b> We're very, very excited about this. We're excited
about the opportunity to get a young quarterback. We said in the
pre-draft stuff that we thought this was realistic possibility. The
more research that we did, the truer it became.

It just came to us
and it was great. We're excited. We think this kid's potential is
unlimted. I don't even think he's scratched the surface yet. As Bill
alluded to on ESPN, this kid hasn't played a lot of quarterback,
having only played the position one year in high school and three
years in college. He hasn't peaked yet. We're excited that when
he does peak, he's going to be a Steeler.

Bill Cowher: The bottom line is that we don't plan on being up
here this often, so when you get a chance to get a good young
quarterback who has a lot of upside, it's too golden an
opportunity to pass.

Q: This isn't a guy who can help you right away. Could this be
considered a gutsy move?
Bill Cowher: It's all how you want to view it. As we sat there
putting this board together, the higher you are, you get some
quality opportunities. Even though you look at needs and while
there may have been other needs that were higher priority, the
opportunity to get a quality football player has to take priority
over
that, particularly when it's that position. You can call it gutsy or
whatever, but you have to look at how the board has been put
together and to follow that, particularly when you are picking
higher in the round.

Q: Bill will you not want him to start right away?
Bill Cowher: We'll wait and see what happens, there's no
preconceived thoughts. It's a good situation to be in because of
the veterans we have on our offensive football team. If there is a
situation for a young quarterback to come in and not feel the
pressure to play right away, we think this is one of those
situations.

Q: Did you get any offers for the pick?
Kevin Colbert: We had some discussions. But we said it on
Monday, we're going to make the pick. It would have taken a lot
for us to drop. We were very happy to have this opportunity. It
would have taken a ton for us to move.

Q: Were you worried somebody was going to jump ahead of
you?
Kevin Colbert: We were good. We had 11 guys. We weren't going
to lose in this situation. There was no way we were going to
lose. The way it unfolded it was great. There was no reason to
panic or do anything crazy. We knew we were going to get a good
player. It worked out for us.

Q: Is there any possibility you might trade one of your two veteran
quarterbacks?
KC: If you look at our quarterback situation, we've got two
veterans, we have a young kid in Brian St. Pierre who has a
bright future and now we add Ben Roethlisberger, that's a
position of strength. We've said it a million times, you can't have
enough good players, especially at that position because it's the
most important.

Q: What do you like about him?
Bill Cowher: I think athletically, he may have better attributes than
the guys taken in front of him. It's only the questions of where he
played. Certainly Pennington and Leftwich are quality
quarterbacks, maybe with Byron there is still something left to be
seen. I think this kid has a lot of upside, the only thing is the
experience. A lot of people point to the one game he played
poorly against Iowa early in the season, but down the stretch, he
played very well. He's only going to get better the more he plays.

Q: With your strength at the position, do you expect to field a lot
of
calls about a trade?
Kevin Colbert: It's going to be a good day. We're going to go
through the rest of the draft and let it roll. We're not actively
going
to try to move anybody today. We're just going to see how it goes.
It worked in the first round. We hope it will work the rest of the
way, too. Sometimes patience pays off.

Q: So you'll have the phone off the hook?
Kevin Colbert: No, we'll have the phone on. That's crazy.

Q: Before the pick, Ben was on the phone talking to somebody
from Pittsburgh, was it you, was it coach?
Kevin Colbert: It was actually Phil Kreidler. He makes our phone
calls. Phil made the contact and then coach Cowher got on with
him. We always like to talk to the player, coach likes to talk to the
player and get a nice feeling about talking to the kid, then we get
the pick in. We needed some extra time just to spell his name.
To make sure we got all the letters.

Q: Bill did you realize you had a national audience when you
were on the phone with him?
Bill Cowher: I did and after I had him on the phone, I couldn't go
and keep him waiting. We made our conversation real short. I
knew he was on the camera. I just told him congratulations and
that I'd call him back.

Q: The MAC isn't a power conference. What's your thoughts on
the kind of football they play there?
Kevin Colbert: Even though people view it as a notch below the
SEC, the Big Ten, whatever, they've been very competitive,
especially last year. And when you watched Ben play in the MAC
last year, he did what you'd expect at that level, dominate. There
was no question he was the best player in that conference and
that's what you'd expect. If it's viewed to be less of a competitive
conference, you want him to dominate and he certainly did that.
We don't think he's reached his peak yet. We're getting a guy
whose on his way up. Some of his physical attributes are very
exciting.

Q: Bill, was there something that put him over the top with you?
Bill Cowher: I think if you looked at those three quarterbacks, they
definitely separated themselves from the rest of the group. It was
just putting them in order. The question was that if you had a
chance to get one of these three, there were some other good
quarterbacks in this draft. This is probably a good draft for
quarterbacks. I think when you look at him, obviously there is the
question of the competition. But when they played Bowling Green, they were both ranked in the top 25. And they had some
big wins this year over major conference schools. The more you
watched the guy with his arm strength, mobility, his accuracy on
the run. Then when you look at how long he played that position,
Mark Whipple comes in and in the first year he gets a pretty good
player to work with. It's an ideal situation for him to come into.